AWS Lambda vs. DigitalOcean Droplets

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers. With Lambda, users can run code for virtually any type of app or backend service—all with zero administration. It takes of requirements to run and scale code with high availability.
$NaN
Per 1 ms
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
DigitalOcean's Droplets is designed to help the user spin up a virtual machine in just 55 seconds. Standard, General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, or Memory-Optimized configurations provide flexibility to build, test, and grow an app from startup to scale.
$4
per month
Pricing
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Editions & Modules
128 MB
$0.0000000021
Per 1 ms
1024 MB
$0.0000000167
Per 1 ms
10240 MB
$0.0000001667
Per 1 ms
Basic
$4
per month
CPU-Optimized
$42
per month
General Purpose
$63
per month
Memory-Optimized
$84
per month
Storage-Optimized
$131
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for DigitalOcean Droplets varies depending on the size of the virtual environment and the associated data needs.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Features
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
9.0
7 Ratings
2% above category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
-
Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.77 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
5.3
6 Ratings
13% below category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
-
Ratings
Dashboards5.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports5.55 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports4.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.5
7 Ratings
4% above category average
DigitalOcean Droplets
-
Ratings
Programming Language Diversity9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Function/Database Integration8.77 Ratings00 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
-
Ratings
DigitalOcean Droplets
8.8
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Small Businesses
IBM Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 7.9 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(52 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(17 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(20 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS LambdaDigitalOcean Droplets
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Lambda excels at event-driven, short-lived tasks, such as processing files or building simple APIs. However, it's less ideal for long-running, computationally intensive, or applications that rely on carrying the state between jobs. Cold starts and constant load can easily balloon the costs.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Droplets are the best choice for developers teams that need reliable Linux servers to deploy their projects, the ability to create a droplet for testing purposes then destroy it, and only get charged for the few hours used makes the chances of messing up very slim. DigitalOcean Droplets is a great solution because the servers are scalable and the process of adding more resources like CPU or RAM to an existing droplet takes only a few minutes and once a server is scaled up it can also be scaled down if necessary which is perfect for supporting a temporary peak in traffic for example.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • No provisioning required - we don't have to pay anything upfront
  • Serverless deployment - it gets executed only when request comes and we pay only for the time the request is getting executed
  • Integrates well with AWS CloudWatch triggers so it is easy to setup scheduled tasks like cron jobs
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Simplicity to scale services--the interface is very quick and effective to use
  • Reliability--this is key for us, as any downtime effects our reputation
  • Keeps the costs down--hosting our own equivalent infrastructure would cost a lot more
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Developing test cases for Lambda functions can be difficult. For functions that require some sort of input it can be tough to develop the proper payload and event for a test.
  • For the uninitiated, deploying functions with Infrastructure as Code tools can be a challenging undertaking.
  • Logging the output of a function feels disjointed from running the function in the console. A tighter integration with operational logging would be appreciated, perhaps being able to view function logs from the Lambda console instead of having to navigate over to CloudWatch.
  • Sometimes its difficult to determine the correct permissions needed for Lambda execution from other AWS services.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • In terms of an availability zone, they have limitations not available in most of the geographical locations.
  • No live support is available which can cause problem if you have outage.
  • Number of service is quite limited.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
I give it a seven is usability because it's AWS. Their UI's are always clunkier than the competition and their documentation is rather cumbersome. There's SO MUCH to dig through and it's a gamble if you actually end up finding the corresponding info if it will actually help. Like I said before, going to google with a specific problem is likely a better route because AWS is quite ubiquitous and chances are you're not the first to encounter the problem. That being said, using SAM (Serverless application model) and it's SAM Local environment makes running local instances of your Lambdas in dev environments painless and quite fun. Using Nodejs + Lambda + SAM Local + VS Code debugger = AWESOME.
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DigitalOcean
Other platforms dashboard console is more difficult to use. DigitalOcean's dashboard is clean, simple, and straightforward
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Amazon consistently provides comprehensive and easy-to-parse documentation of all AWS features and services. Most development team members find what they need with a quick internet search of the AWS documentation available online. If you need advanced support, though, you might need to engage an AWS engineer, and that could be an unexpected (or unwelcome) expense.
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DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
AWS Lambda is good for short running functions, and ideally in response to events within AWS. Google App Engine is a more robust environment which can have complex code running for long periods of time, and across more than one instance of hardware. Google App Engine allows for both front-end and back-end infrastructure, while AWS Lambda is only for small back-end functions
Read full review
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Droplets is continuously evolving to be more and more powerful. It has great features and has low cost options, which is really great for developers. Its CDN, Loadbalancer, etc. make it a good place to host a high-traffic application. Moroever, DigitalOcean Droplets has a nonprofit program that helps nonprofit sites to run their infrastructure, which is tremendous and no competitor of DigitalOcean Droplets does that.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Positive - Only paying for when code is run, unlike virtual machines where you pay always regardless of processing power usage.
  • Positive - Scalability and accommodating larger amounts of demand is much cheaper. Instead of scaling up virtual machines and increasing the prices you pay for that, you are just increasing the number of times your lambda function is run.
  • Negative - Debugging/troubleshooting, and developing for lambda functions take a bit more time to get used to, and migrating code from virtual machines and normal processes to Lambda functions can take a bit of time.
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DigitalOcean
  • Digital Ocean has been great helping us move web apps to the cloud
  • Digital Ocean has been really helpful when hiring contractors
  • The interface could use some work, but overall its not terrible
Read full review
ScreenShots